The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court to
return two domain names seized as part of the U.S. government's
"Operation in Our Sites," an ongoing campaign against websites that
illegally provide access to copyrighted material.

"This misguided intellectual property enforcement effort is causing
serious collateral damage to free speech rights," said EFF Intellectual
Property Director Corynne McSherry. "These domain seizures should cease
unless and until the government can fix the First Amendment flaws
inherent in the program."

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland
Security Investigations (HSI) announced in February that the domain
names of ten "linking" websites had been seized for allegedly providing
access to illegal, pirated telecasts of the National Football League,
the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, World
Wrestling Entertainment, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Visitors to these websites now only see a banner that says the domain
name was seized by the New York office of ICE HSI because of criminal
copyright violations.

The websites did not themselves host any illegal content, but allowed
users to easily browse for links to third party websites that were
hosting pirated videos, according to ICE.

EFF's amicus brief (PDF)
was filed in support of a petition from Puerto 80, the Spanish company
that owns the streaming sites Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org, which
were both seized by ICE.